Staff writer Duncan Adams visited Center in the Square during “Family Day of Discovery,” and reported back (click this link to read,) and Rebecca Barnett took photos. Did you go yourself? What did you think?

Click the images below to go to the various galleries.

Center in the Square grand reopening

Harrison Museum of African American Culture

History Museum of Western Virginia

Science Museum of Western Virginia

Click image for an enlarged view of the tour map.

Click here for a Google Map tour of Open Studios of Roanoke 2013.

Spring has come to Roanoke, which means it’s time for artists to open their studios once again to a weekend’s worth of visitors.

This year’s Open Studios of Roanoke tour features 26 artists at 13 stops, including new arrivals and familiar faces in new places.

Max Mitchell, 26, has opened Roanoke Art Works, abbreviated “R.A.W.,” at 26 Church Ave. S.W. His father, potter Steve Mitchell, has been a mainstay of the Open Studios tour for many years. Max Mitchell, a painter, has moved back to Roanoke after attending Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and living in Philadelphia for seven years.

“I never really liked being in the city,” he said. “I always liked being in the mountains.”

Steve Mitchell will have work on display in Roanoke Art Works this weekend, as will Roanoke painter Greg Osterhaus.

The father-son duo made waves in the regional art scene even before Max Mitchell moved back — in 2011, he won the grand prize at the Biennial Juried Exhibition at Roanoke College, and his father won second place.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

From my Inbox to you:

`Round the Mountain Launches First Sweepstakes

`Round the Mountain: Southwest Virginia’s Artisan Network launches its first sweepstakes April 16, 2013. The Artisan Trails of Southwest Virginia Sweepstakes will award three prize packages highlighting the region’s Artisan Trails.

Each package includes a combination of tickets to venues, overnight accommodations, gift certificates for meals, outdoor recreation, artisan demonstrations and regional crafts, highlighting the following `Round the Mountain trails:

• Clinch River and Rivers to Ridge Artisan Trails
• Countryside Artisan Trail
• Floyd, Montgomery and New River Artisan Trails

Three winners will be drawn July 16, 2013. For more information regarding the packages and rules associated with the sweepstakes, or to enter, please visit www.artisansweepstakes.com. Read more »

From Sunday’s column:

Painter Elizabeth Sauder is one of the artists taking part in the Lexington/Rockbridge Studio Tour. Photo courtesy of Jean Tremmel.

The Lexington/Rockbridge Studio Tour has added a few more artists and a bit of barbecue to its second go-round.

The free self-guided tour features 11 studios along a 20-mile loop. Participating guest artists from North Carolina, West Virginia, New Mexico and several cities around Virginia bring the total number of exhibiting artists to 36. The tour hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and April 21.

Artist Susan Harb, whose treehouse studio is part of the tour, said that the Effinger Volunteer Fire Department on Collierstown Road will be selling barbecue dinners “to add even more authentic Rockbridge County flavor to the tour.”

Harb organized the first tour in April 2012, acting on a suggestion by fellow Lexington artist Marsha Heatwole, who will demonstrate printmaking in her studio at 1125 Sugar Creek Road. Other ongoing activities include portrait painting by Marcia Germain at Harb’s studio at 62 Brushwood Place and photo shoots at Ellen Martin’s photography studio at 876 Enfield Road.

The kinds of arts and crafts for show and sale on the tour include painting, sculpture, silversmithing, pottery, photography, hand-loom weaving, basket weaving, stained glass and jewelry making, with prices ranging from $20 to $20,000.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

Yes, my title for this entry is tongue-in-cheek. As part of its week-long series of spring break activities, the Taubman Museum of Art’s Art Venture center for children invited visitors, especially kids, to “yarn bomb” objects today. The results were predictably cute. I wrote a little bright about the not-so-covert action, and Rebecca Barnett has photos. Click the image below to see and read. (Though I might seem to be razzing the museum a teensy bit for its lack of rebellious spirit, to be fair, every yarn bombing that I know of that’s happened in the region has been done with the blessings — and even the participation — of the property owner.)

REBECCA BARNETT | The Roanoke Times. Katlyn Thompson, 6, of Roanoke wraps yarn around a chair with her mom, Kathy, during a “yarn bombing” event at the Taubman Museum of Art today.

Last year’s octopus float will be a giant sugar skull this year in the Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival Parade, which starts at noon on Saturday, March 30 at Community High School in downtown Roanoke. Anyone is welcome to join in.

MIKE ALLEN | The Roanoke Times. Marginal Arts Festival founder Brian Counihan demonstrates one of the Easter Egg masks he’s making for the festival parade on March 30.

The Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival decided not to take chances this year.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be odd, bizarre, cutting-edge art experiences mixed into the festivities. It’s the weather they don’t want to gamble on.

For the past four years, the festival has tied its schedule to Mardi Gras, which meant it sometimes has taken place in the heart of winter. Founder Brian Counihan counts his blessings that the colorful and strange Marginal Arts Parade through downtown Roanoke has never been snowed out.

“We dodged a bullet every year,” said Roanoke artist Ralph Eaton, another of the festival’s organizers. So the artists running the festival decided to move it back a few weeks. (Eaton joked that he wished it could be held April Fool’s Day.)

The lineup this year includes an appearance from the Society for Creative Anachronism, famous for wearing medieval garb and battling with rattan swords, a contest to write a novel in 48 hours, experimental poetry, experimental art, experimental theater, and workshops that might help you understand what all these experiments are getting at. “We have a lot of professional artists involved,” Counihan said.

Of course there’s the parade at noon March 30 and the absurdist street carnival that immediately follows. This year, the festival ends with Vaudeville Night, a performance at the June M. McBroom Theater in Community High School at 302 Campbell Ave. S.E. Themes for the festival include Easter eggs, the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead, and lucha libre, the sport of Mexican professional wrestling.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Festival organizers could use help decorating this giant clown shoe. Click the image to go to the Marginal Arts Festival page on Facebook.

The H2O Heater at 813 Fifth Street S.W. in Roanoke will play host to a truly unusual multimedia performance at 7 p.m. Friday, March 1.

Anna Roberts-Gevalt of Blacksburg and Elizabeth LaPrelle of Rural Retreat perform Appalachian ballads with fiddle and banjo and share Appalachian folklore to celebrat e Southwest Virginia culture.

They add a visual artistic twist, creating illustrations on long rolls of paper that are spooled by hand crank during the performances.

The scrolling, backlit images match the songs and stories, creating a sort of low-tech movie that the pair call “crankies.” Occasionally the pair uses shadow puppetry to give a “crankie” an added element of animation.

The show is free, with a suggested donation of $5 to $10. For more information visit http://tinyurl.com/crankies.

Guest reviewer Abigail Minor, a Hollins University junior, returns for a second round today (her first review here) with an assessment of the The Roanoke Valley Reef, on display in Roanoke College’s Olin Gallery until March 1st. —MikeA

The Roanoke Valley Reef
By Abigail Minor

The Roanoke Valley Coral Reef, on view at Roanoke College, simulates the experience of being immersed underwater in a colorful reef. Rippling mounds of psychedelic yarn, piled on freestanding pedestals throughout the darkened room, form a visual buffet on which the viewer is invited to slowly gorge. A soft symphony of underwater sounds plays in the background.

There is no denying the vast amount of work that was put into the creation and layout of the project. Its aim – to inspire viewers to examine ecological problems – is admirable. As a cohesive whole, however, the visual effect is somewhat uneven. The multitude of color and texture in each piece is at times overwhelming. Individual stitches lose their beauty while singular pieces end up lost in the patch-worked mass, and the formal structures can feel repetitive. It might be a testament to the success of a shared project. But is yarn a serious enough substance to convey the urgency of the environmental issues?

Nevertheless, certain pieces stand apart. Bleaching, an intricately composed reef comprised of whites, ivories, buttery yellows, and truffle browns, forms a ghostly silhouette amid the exhibition’s raging acid trip of color. The albino-like beauty of this aquatic structure conveys a quiet tension, a feeling of mourning. The accompanying wall text reveals that harmful chemicals bleach the coral and cause its death. Had more pieces possessed the same balance of artistic insight and ecological information, the overall message would have been much better supported.

Though exhausting to the eye, the exhibition’s innovative and whimsical premise makes a case for more art that unites community members — in this case, stitch by stitch, in an effort to aid the natural world. For this, Roanoke College should be commended.

UPDATE: This just in from gallery director Talia Logan:

The opening lecture and reception for tonight is still on schedule but those of your who are unable to make it this evening  the Roanoke Valley Reef will have an additional opening reception for this exhibition Friday February 8th from 6-8 in Olin Hall Galleries.

Staff writer Lindsey Nair has this feature on the Roanoke Valley Reef, an exhibition that combines art, crafts and science, opening today in Roanoke College’s Olin Gallery. (Full disclosure: my wife Anita contributed to the creation of the reefs, especially the “bleached reef” described in the story.)—MikeA

A common thread
Olin Gallery’s latest art exhibit, the Roanoke Valley Reef, is a colorful and educational model of a coral reef made almost entirely of pieces crocheted by local volunteers.
By Lindsey Nair

Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times. Jan Minton (left), a mathematics professor at Roanoke College, and Talia Logan, director of the Olin and Smoyer Galleries at the college, organized and constructed The Roanoke Valley Reef over two years from more than 2,200 contributed crocheted pieces.

The stony structures known as coral reefs are formed by colonies of living creatures called corals, which leave deposits that build up over thousands of years.

An art exhibit that opens in Roanoke College’s Olin Gallery this evening was created in much the same way. It may not have taken a million individuals or thousands of years to build, but it couldn’t have happened without lots of time and community involvement.

The Roanoke Valley Reef exhibit is a colorful model of a coral reef made almost entirely of yarn. It contains more than 2,200 separate pieces crocheted by some 250 local volunteers. The Roanoke reef is a satellite of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project, which was created by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Institute For Figuring.

On a purely aesthetic level, the exhibit is stunning. But just beneath the surface, visitors will find lessons in mathematical theory, marine biology and needle arts, not to mention the benefits of teamwork.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

The bleached reef represents the environmental problems that cause coral reefs to lose their color and eventually die. In the background is the “toxic reef,” which is meant to draw attention to ocean pollution.

The Roanoke Valley Reef

>> What: A satellite of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project created by Margaret and Christine Wertheim of The Institute For Figuring in Los Angeles.
>> Where: Olin Gallery, Roanoke College
>> When: 1 to 4 p.m., Jan. 25 through March 4. Lecture by Paul Snelgrove, 6 p.m. tonight; opening reception, 7 to 9 p.m. tonight, Smoyer Gallery
>> Cost: Free
>> Info: crochetcoralreef.org; roanoke.edu/A-Z_Index/Coral_Reef; coralreef@roanoke.edu; 375-2332

Staff writer Matt Chittum has this report today about plans to build an artisan center along Interstate 81 in Rockbridge County, with the intent to create something like Heartwood in Abingdon or Tamarack in West Virginia. (An aside: when I saw this item I couldn’t help but wonder what the folks who tried to save Lexington’s Theater at Lime Kiln from closing, but couldn’t get funding, make of this project. I should note though that the funding for this new project comes from private investors.)

Artisan center planned on I-81 in Raphine area
It will be modeled after Heartwood in Abingdon and Tamarack in Beckley, W.Va.
By Matt Chittum

A group of private investors led by a former Rockbridge county supervisor plans to build an $11 million artisan center in the Raphine area near the landmark White’s Truck Stop.

The planned AWASAW Artisan Center would be located on 8 acres next to the truck stop at Interstate 81 Exit 205, according to a news release from Rockbridge County’s Office of Community Development.

The investors, led by Bobby Berkstresser, expect to have final plans completed in March and begin construction in June, said Brandy Flint of the community development office. The opening is planned for summer 2014.

“We intend for this Center to become … an attractive, must-do gateway to Rockbridge,” Berkstresser said in the news release.

The center would be modeled after Heartwood in Abingdon and Tamarack in Beckley, W.Va., according to the news release, with an eye for promoting local industries including farmers, wineries, artists and craft makers.

Plans include a demonstration area for handcrafts, a “Virginia arts and crafts retail center,” a new Virginia National Guard Museum, a “Taste of Virginia” marketplace for local food and wines, a food court and a tourist information center.

To be built adjacent to a 160-acre business park, the center could draw a half million visitors annually, the investors group projects.

Click here to read the rest of the story.